Indonesian Chronicles - Day 10, 22/8/2018 - Impressions, Facts & Stories

More travel. We head to Ubud, central Bali.

T. a student in Anthropology (and a former kid) is specifically excited by the prospect of visiting the Monkey forest. Monkeys are indeed everywhere. People too. L. comments on the fact that there are in fact more people than monkeys. What if one day aliens, like humans today, would visit a ‘human city’ as an attraction?  L. walk under a tree and ... gets showered by one of the Balinese monkey. ‘It is vegan urine’ claims A. which makes it sound a little better. In the absence of tissues, I find some gaze from my first aid kit to wipe him off and a monkey jumps on me and steals a little pouch from my kit. It is a small plastic bag containing folded rubber gloves. The monkey opens the bag expertly and pull the gloves …with disappointment. A young woman lectures me on the risk of having the monkey swallow the glove. I feel like a monkey criminal... A. fights with the monkey and gets the glove back. We move quickly to the next monkey attraction, a monkey jumping on the head of a redhead woman. She giggles and her friend takes multiple pictures with the monkey. Suddenly, the redhead woman screams as the monkey start pulling her hair frenetically. ‘No wonder, her hair looks like fibrous watermelon’ suggests T. 

We move on.